The Catacomb Abyss (1992)

It's weird to think that once upon a time, games could have telephone numbers on their title screens.

Name:The Catacomb Abyss
Number:12
Year:1992
Publisher:SoftDisk
Developer:Gamer's Edge
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:3/5
Time:3 hours 00 minutes
Won:Yes (9W/2L at time of original playthrough)

Of the many games that ID Software made that SoftDisk had the rights to, it was a stroke of luck that they had Catacomb 3D. While the 2D Catacomb games are nice, they're not necessarily special in design. Dangerous Dave is clever, but appeals to a specific niche and isn't special technology-wise. But Catacomb 3D had everything it needed to be special, it was just lacking polish. Hovertank 3D, meanwhile, would be too barebones to fully flesh out.

When you capitalize it like that, I start to suspect that your secret knowledge isn't that useful.

Taking place after Catacomb 3D, the story is that the minions of Nemesis, previously known as Grelminar, have built a mausoleum next to Towne Cemetery. Emboldening them, they perform vile acts of violence to the nearby townsfolk. Naturally, they hire you, Petton Everhail, to find out what's going on and stop it.

Abyss comes firmly in the era of Softdisk games where they give you a ton of options for info at the start and an in-game help file, but there's a focus on slowly getting you up to speed in-game. There's no in-game description of your keys, but the basics are the usual. Arrow keys for movement, ctrl fires and alt sidesteps. Additional points are V/TAB for quick turning, which is vital in some situations.

It isn't perfect, but I can't say I've ever felt that this should play a different way. Turning is slow and even with quick turning an enemy is going to get the jump on you if they're behind you, but the game early on encourages cautiousness in approaching a room. The first enemy type you fight, zombies, pop out of the ground and it's easy to get blindsided by him. But it's just one at first and even if you die, you can just restart. Enemies that don't pop out like that don't become alert if you aren't looking at them. Goofy in theory, but encourages clever movement in practice.

Your attacks are not terribly changed from Catacomb 3D. There's no holding the fire button down for a nuke attack, you're just spamming magick missiles now. Enemies have a pain state which makes spamming them effective. Z fires a rapid stream of missiles if you have a zapper orb, X fires in a circular pattern if you have an xterminator orb. Xterminators do more damage than regular missiles for some reason. C causes you to heal yourself if you have a cure potion. You can carry up to 99 of each. In addition to individual pickups, there are chests which drop various amounts.

Some of the later descriptions get spicy.

The cleverest part of Catacomb Abyss, which is for once actually used in comparison to Catacomb 3D, is that the GUI constantly has a bit of text on-top related to where you are on the map. As odd as it sounds, it helps avoid the problem a lot of Wolf-clones have where the entire level is a confusing maze, because you have something distinct to place it. In a sense its cheating, but when the choice is cheating or nothing at all, I'll take it. The level design usually isn't so bad as for that to happen, but it does cinch it.

Most of the time this information comes off as telling you things you could find out by wandering around.

Rounding out the GUI are scrolls, which you read as you come across them and you can reread by pressing a number from 1-8. The requisite keys, which come in four colors and every time you open a door that key disappears. In all situations, you enter one by walking in, either one that blocks off part of the level or one that leads to the next level. Finally a radar, which if you have the gem which reads a particular enemy type, will show that enemy on the radar. Gems come on or before most levels with the enemies of those types.

The game opens with a set of graveyard levels function well as opening levels. Enemies in the first two are zombies, shades and bats, so the kind which suggest slowly checking the areas of a room to ensure you don't get backstabbed or enemies who die upon attacking you. And if you come from a game where you can open doors, the game encourages you to shoot walls by giving them descriptions such as "weakened walls" and different graphics. Along with the occasional enemy pop-up next to an item, so if you're trigger happy you find out that stray shots destroy items real quick.

That said, there are two gems in these three levels, and the game makes it incredibly obvious that they're there. Depending on how you go about it, they might just be easier to find than the keys which lead to the way out. Level 3, outside the mausoleum, also adds skeletons to the list of enemies, which are tougher than zombies, but also just stand around until you activate them.

The graveyard leads to a mausoleum/crypt, where we get our first ranged enemy, a squishy flying wizard. They're not special, your usual slow ranged attacks, but the game decides that this is the time to start putting you in close quarters where you can't easily dodge. Though, this doesn't entirely work against you since the wizards shoot infrequently and deal low damage on this level.

This section illustrates what I think the game does really well in design, wall block usage. A lot of games tend to have random choices, where it seems like they're just randomly breaking up a wall. Here, there's one used primarily for all walls, with others being used as accents or as indications that you can shoot a wall. For most of the game it works well, though once you've cleaned out an area it can feel unusually empty. Here, it helps that we get what is probably the first example of an occult area in a FPS, look at all the pentagrams and sarcifical altars!

Den of Zombies follows the crypt up, which comes off more as a cave. This one has the closest to real doors, wall pieces that when you touch them disappear. There's no new enemies, but skeletons come out of the walls in this level, which, combined with the zombies, makes the level feel like something out of a horror game. I think I was scared of this level as a kid, but in retrospect, that makes sense. How many games have you played where enemies are coming out of the floor and the walls?

Ancient Aqueduct continues with the monsters coming out of the floor, only this time it's less literal since you're standing in water. More like they come in and out of the floor. This is the most boring level, since you're simply waiting for the trolls to come out of the water, then moving through a place with basically no variation in wall texture. Which just illustrates why the rest of the game works so well, a few accents make all the difference.

The Orc Mines brings the game back to enemies which just stand around. Orcs, reusing the orc sprites from 3D, feel like a downgrade from the trolls, since they don't take a million missiles to kill. Them constantly stopping for me to shoot them is a bit distracting. I guess its intended for me to recover my zappers, as if I don't need excuses to use them when I've been hovering near the 99 mark for a while.

Lair of the Trolls is a bit of a breather, despite the trolls being fairly beefy enemies. Probably because it also introduces hourglasses which stop time for 99 "seconds". Which I suspect are tied to clock speed. Your missiles hang in the air during this and there are only so many you can fire at a time. I've never actually been in a position where this felt helpful. It just felt like something I had to wait out.

The Demon's Inferno follows. Bright red walls, nearly all of which look the same, demons, which just absorb a ton of magick missiles and you get what is not the best level. The game does break it up considerably with skeletons popping up in alcoves. You're spamming your attacks while staring at a bright red screen, which is just not good. I think this might have something to do with certain issues in these kinds of games, the developers don't realize you shouldn't be using bright colors like this.

Battleground of the Titans is two large rooms and a hallway. Do you enjoy killing dozens of big meat shields to get to a key? Do you enjoy potentially destroying a key because you were to careless with high powered attacks because you now have 99 of everything? Even when it's crap, I'll give Abyss credit for making different crap each time.

Coven of Mages adds in teleports. The game offers you five locations to go through to, but you only need to go to three. Enemies are the mages again along with giant eyes that shoot electricity. Even the later are too weak at this stage to do much to you. I wish they were just a little bit stronger.

Then we go to another area full of bright walls, but at least this time there are some accents. Still wandering around, shooting demons, because killing enemies which take a thousand hits is fun. Even the skeletons make a reappearance because demons and skeletons make sense together.

Finally, Nemesis himself. Or at least, Nemesis after fighting through a horde of demons. Nemesis is just sort of hanging out, behind one of two nearly identical corridors. You can't quite stunlock him into submission, and his shots take out 25% of your health, but by this point that's not really a problem.

The game ends with a nice, relaxing stroll to the surface, in which you can see statues of all the enemies you killed, along with being given the cheat codes to the game. Which is kind of nice, more games should have done that. Let's get to the rating.

Weapons:
I appreciate the variety, but it basically boils down to, regular attack, autofire attack, highly situational attack and healing. Because of the way enemy alertness works, the situational one is one you have to work to use properly. 2/10

Enemies:
While some enemies are too easy or too tedious, there's enough that there's a decent variety of more interesting ones. Even if the number of enemies on a level is limited and too often every enemy has the same behavior. 3/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Something new is always being thrown at you, albeit, at the cost that what is new might not necessarily be good, just different. 5/10

Player Agency:
Your basic setup, except different weapons are special buttons rather than switching attacks. That said, the fast turn function doesn't come off very well in the heat of combat. 6/10

Interactivity:
Destructible walls and that's it. 1/10

Atmosphere:
At first, we get some decent dark/gothic fantasy elements going on. A mysterious mausoleum being built in honor of a dead lich. Wander through spooky graveyards waiting for monsters to pop out of the floor or the wall. Then we get random mines, aquaducts and then what appears to be hell. It gets a bit goofy. 6/10

Graphics:
Most artwork here is nice, but as time goes on, it feels like the game is running out of visual steam. Enemy designs are nice, but have limited animation and only face one direction. 5/10

Story:
Your basic go kill the bad guy affair. 1/10

Sound/Music:
Detailed PC Speaker, but no music. Everything has a nice sound to it, but far too often it's just silence. 2/10

That's 31, down from 34 last time. Broadly the same as last time, but a few of the more bloated categories got cut down to reasonable levels, with a few other categories picking up more points. The most significant change is that level design no longer gets an eight.

In the past, I've generally considered this one of the best 1992 FPS, despite the issues with the level design. It generally came off as doing something that ID would eventually succeed at with Doom, making a world which is not just randomly placed blocks. I still think that, but now it's tempered by how it's pretty clear that most levels were thought out with random ideas and that more worked than not was down to luck.

Next time, we return to Apogee with Secret Agent.

Catacomb 3D (1991)

Name:Catacomb 3D
Number:5
Year:1991
Publisher:Softdisk
Developer:iD Software
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:4/5
Time:1 hour 50 minutes
Won:Yes (72W/60L)

Catacomb 3D is kind of the weird kid out of Id's FPS series. It's not the "first" FPS like Hovertank, and it lacks the cult status of Wolfenstein or Quake, and Doom apparently Citizen Kane-like longevity. It's also the only series without any sequels made by Id themselves. It's also something of a convoluted series, as every game seems to be unrelated to the others outside of the name and general gameplay concept. This includes the original Gauntlet-like and the bizarre number of semi-sequels that had.

The story is that your evil enemy Nemesis has kidnapped a friend of yours, and you must traverse his dungeons to recover him, facing many deadly foes. This is not the version of the story that happened originally or indeed what the story was actually supposed to be. Instead, you were supposed to recover your friend, named Nemesis, from the evil Grelminar, the lich. Somewhere along the line in this series the names got changed around and now they retroactively changed it. John Romero has said that yes, that's the right way, Grelminar is the bad guy. Because the boys at Id had a habit of nailing together their games awkwardly, another series of Id's, Dark Designs, had Grelminar as a long dead wizard whose staff you have to find.

This time around I'm not playing it in DOS, instead I'm using the sourceport CatacombGL. This adds all the usual conveniences like mouse aim and, my real concern, a map. It's utterly bizarre playing a game like this with mouse aim, modern control-style or not, it's basically cheating as far as the original game's design is concerned. Even if the game really exploited it's slow turning speed for the worse.

That said, Catacomb controls more or less like a typical FPS of this era. Arrows move, with strafing being some strange thing off somewhere in the alphabet keys. Ctrl shoots, and esc is the menu. Of special note are the various magical abilities, a rapid fire attack activated with the z key, an exterminator, which shoots around you. both requiring use of a special items, a cure spell, activated with C, and a charge attack, which you hold down the ctrl key for. Inserted later, but now usable in the source port, V to quick turn, and O to open the map. The space bar does not activate anything, it's merely an alternative for C. Instead you walk into objects or shoot them. Curiously, and this might just be the source port, but the charged attack seems to be next to useless as an attack.

Unfortunately it took me a level to realize that I could turn the modern effects off.

Scrolls are also a thing, which you read whenever you first run over then, and then you can read them anytime later by pressing the number indicated on that particular scroll. The game uses this system, because you don't change weapons with the number keys. In retrospect this is the game that least needed to use this system, as there's not a lot for the game to talk about

The game is fairly simple, but with a slightly cruel bent. Enemies lie in wait for you, and when they see you, they come after you, with no alert sound. Which feels curle, especially since Hovertank 3D had a radar and indeed the later Catacomb games would also have a radar. I do dig the HUD though, especially the compass, more than you got in Wolf. There's not much enemy variety, basically just an orc, a troll and a few others. Also a big part of the game, locked doors, with multi-color keys. They're still disposable keys, but it's not longer a generic key to door thing, but color key to color door.

This time around I decided to try to search for secrets more than I did last time. There are three on this first level, with which I found somewhat easily thanks to the map now showing me the general area, which is defeating the spirit of the original about as much as using mouse look. Interestingly, there's an alternative portal to the one you're supposed to take, which skips about half the game. Which, if you play those levels right, means you're out a lot of items.

Oh, yeah, there's music in this game, one track. If you've played Commander Keen 4, you know it, that short and mysterious track, which played in a lot of that game's levels. After having played this, I assumed that this version was just shorter for whatever reason, but even that version lasts a whopping 16 seconds. No wonder I thought the music was repetitive originally. I just turned it off. The sound is some very soft adlib sounds which seem to be getting on my nerves. They should work...they just don't. This is also the introduction of that cursed "walking along the wall" sound that really makes you hate searching for secrets in Wolfenstein. Here it sounds like some kind of manic woodpecker.

As to general level design, this tries to be cleverer, but it doesn't really have much capacity to be clever. It's an early texture-based wall design, but there isn't a lot of variety here. Those little text bars on the bottom are the game's attempts at creating rooms, something that later entries in the series would take good advantage of, but this is basically just telling you what would be here if the game could depict it. Like a Scott Adams text adventure, but without the charm. Oh, yeah, it violates the cardinal rule of level design by spawning enemies in a position where they're alert right away.

To be somewhat fair, it is tries to be somewhat consistent with the kind of design first implemented in Catacomb, just that when it's in first person you absolutely feel every time you have to go back and forth on a key hunt. It's just that now, when the game puts a key in a secret area, it's no longer considered polite, it's a dick move. There's just not that much to talk about otherwise. Occasionally the game will pull out some things that later games would refine. One level has Blake Stone's more secrets than actual level approach, but Catacomb lacks the splendor that game had when it did it right. There's also a hub area, less in the sense we think of a hub area today and more, pick a destination and one will actually allow you to advance. 

Because of this, the hub areas don't really offer any stuff, instead they seem intended to wear you down for the final section, there are no secrets here, and some small number of potions. Of particular note is the hall of doors. Dozens of doors, which may contain treasure, but really contain three trolls and another key. Of course one of these identical doors is hiding the exit...of the hub. Drat, missed two of the areas, how will I ever recover?

Basically an EGA version of those wizards from Heretic.

In this final section, now there are wizard enemies, some fancier name probably exists. They're ranged, but a bit disappointing, because they take forever to decide to shoot. Difficulty in general is weird like, because while this game can be hard as originally intended, this sort of isn't in the source port. You can easily stunlock enemies and besides that you're rarely ever in a position to need an exterminator, so if you find a lot of the secrets, you can quickly get more magic than you'll ever need. The only level with some number of monsters was that hall of doors, which you can't fight all at once anyway.

The primary source of difficulty is in the level design itself, it's very hard to find your bearings in an area where the walls are mostly all the same. I think having a small number of wallsprites might actually be worse than no wallsprites at all. This comes to an annoying head on level 18, a secret wall maze, except it obviously isn't very secret considering you start in a room with no exit. Even with the map this is tedious and an endurance test. Which I should clarify, of your patience, you can save and load at any time you wish.

Then we get the hell level, in which demons appear. Now you can choose whether or not to hammer the fire button for a minute waiting for these demons to die, or you can use a zapper. I'm sorry 2 zappers. That's some great enemy progression, from simple to take out, to burning through your items. On top of that, there's some teleportors here which, if you pick the wrong one, will send you back to the hub area.

Nemesis's Lair is an absolute joke in comparison to those two levels. You'd think with Nemesis alongside 2 demons that he'd make them look like jokes, but no, he doesn't really take as much damage as they do, and his piddly ranged attack makes him the least important member of this final fight. I'm not entirely ungrateful though.

After killing him, you walk towards a man in a glass case, freeing him. The game is over and this is the ending screen. Better than nothing I guess. Starting to feel like the story of this game.

Weapons:
You are given a decent arsenal, yet, none of them really help you that much beyond the basic blast and a rapid-fire attack. The exterminator is something you never actually need and the charge attack is inefficent compared to just hammering the ctrl key. 2/10

Enemies:
Enemies mostly result in a flat increase in health, with two ranged enemies and a weird bat creature. It's not that bad outside of the demon, the harshest damage sponge I've seen chronologically. 3/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Ranges from forgettable to downright player unfriendly. Every single thing I consider a sin of level design is here in great gusto. 1/10

Player Agency:
Curious, playing this kind of game with mouse look still feels wrong, and that comes across in how the game works. Obviously the game didn't intend for mouse aiming and the map, the latter of which despite it's cheat factor is practically essential. That said, somehow the mouse aiming didn't quite feel like cheating, instead removing un unfair advantage the AI has. Mostly functional though, despite the awkward walking speed. 7/10

Interactivity:
You can walk into things and shoot some walls. 1/10

Atmosphere:
This game just gives me a headache with how it feels to make any kind of progression. 0/10

Graphics:
While everything is nice in isolation, there's not a whole heck of a lot of animation here, enemies only ever look towards you, even when they run away. Walls look ugly as you're trying to figure out where you are. The big fancy backgrounds are nice, and make me wish that Id tried their hands at an adventure game, like the other shareware titans did. 3/10

Story:
Not really a consideration, even ignoring the continuity issues. 0/10

Sound/Music:
16 seconds of music and some sound effects that really got on my nerves. 1/10

That's 18. Five points less than I originally gave it and 3 points more than Hovertank. I kind of begrudgingly respected Hovertank in my recent playthrough, but this one just felt like noise. Honestly, a bit of a shame, considering that the non-Id Catacomb games are mostly better.

Commander Keen in Keen Dreams (1991)

Name:Commander Keen in Keen Dreams
Number:179
Year:1991
Publisher:Softdisk
Developer:Id
Genre:Side-Scroller Shooter
Difficulty:4/5
Time:1 hour 5 minutes
Won:Yes (70W/60L)

Keen Dreams is the weird entry in the series. It doesn't obey most of the rules and conventions of the series. Instead of some small scale space opera Saturday morning cartoon, Keen Dreams is a fever dream. It also represents one of the last games Id made for Softdisk, making it one of the two titles to not be published by Apogee. This is because Id technically made the original trilogy using Softdisk's resources, and this was one of the ways Id paid back that debt. Id took this time to build up what would become the general design for the second trilogy...with a few alterations, of course.

Wait, rubber cement? That sounds like a bad material to make your spaceship out of...

Taking place after the first trilogy, Keen has defeated The Grand Intellect and now is facing his worst mission yet; his mother's mashed potatoes. Yeah, he and his mother are arguing about this, and he's sent to his room. The takeaway is supposed to be "Keen hates vegetables", but I'm really just getting from this "Mrs. Blaze can't make mashed potatoes". In my experience potatoes don't really fall under the same umbrella as broccoli. The kind of people who hate mashed potatoes are not the kind of people who hate broccoli.

As he falls asleep, he's brought into a strange world with sentient potatoes, wielding spears and wearing helmets. They say he's now a slave of King Boobus Tuber and he fries them with his Vorticon Hyperpistol. Then a young boy rushes up and says asks Keen to save all the children kidnapped by King Tuber. Keen accepts and the nightmare begins. It's a strange premise, which, if the story of the series mattered much, would leave many questions.

Using flower power against a tator trooper.

Dreams's premise is thus very simple, kill King Boobus Tuber. How do you do that? Find some bombs, as many as you can. You're going to need it, because Keen's regular weapon is a weak and ineffective arcing weapon, called Flower Power, each shot transforms whatever it hits into a flower for a few seconds before turning back. This doesn't work like a typical blaster either, the flower power flies in an arc, bouncing off any walls and after landing remains wherever it landed for a few seconds before disappearing. This, combined with the strange designs of the enemies makes the whole thing a fever dream.

Outside of the first level the game is very nonlinear, you could go directly to the boss were it not for that little snag involving the bombs. Can't enter his chamber until you have 12. What makes all this weird is that because not all levels have the bombs, some places feel quite unnecessary.

Keen mostly controls well. Being used to the later 3 Keens instead of this one is kind of ruining the game. This basically plays like those would, except instead of having a pogo stick, Keen just throws the flower power. It's a bit awkward playing a Keen game without a pogo stick, especially after the awfulness that was Dynowarz. Keen's jumping feels...wrong somehow. So the biggest improvement is now Keen can shoot up, which I wouldn't have thought to do if I didn't get incredibly frustrated in The Melon Mines. And for the first time, the game now allows you to save mid-level. This is much appreciated as the game goes on.

Keen also gains the ability to go up and down poles. Down is faster than up, but you can speed things along by rapidly jumping and holding up. This was told to you in the manual of Keen 4, so it's hardly a secret, but it's not explained anywhere in this game. You can also shoot up and down. There are now keys, generic keys. All in all, the controls aren't terrible, but still feels somewhat alien to the later games. It's not primitive like the originals, just strange.

There are a few other strange pieces of the game. For instance, there's now Adlib sound, but no music. This, and I suspect an issue I have with Catacomb 3D, is that Softdisk has a strict size limit, one floppy disk or about 640k kb. This explains the rather small size of the game along with that. One little fun fact about this is that were Id's plans successful, there would be an actual song with lyrics. Just an ode telling Keen to eat his vegetables, but interesting nonetheless for the sheer balls it would take to do something like that on a floppy disk. Then we have the menus, which are strange and something I can't say I've seen before or since. It practically feels like some bizarre OS GUI.

The enemies are where this whole fever dream thing come full force, because most look like some sort of demon tormenting a child about his vegetables. They feel unsettling, perhaps that's just memories from what I played it as a child. I'm surprised nobody tried to write some mediocre creepypasta about these guys, it feels like the kind of thing that would inspire someone with more time than sense. Hey, someone wrote a creepypasta about Skittles for some strange reason!

• Carrot Courier, these guys run around and jump over gaps and ledges. They don't harm you themselves, just pushing you around, but where they're running, there's sure to be a pit around.
• Tator Troopers, slow ground enemies. They remain rooted on whatever piece of land they're on, walking towards you whenever they see you, and trying to stab you with their spear. Alone, not very troublesome, in numbers, good luck.
  
• Melon Lips, they spit, what I guess is supposed to be seeds. Basically turrets, which normally I would have no issue with, except the aforementioned mechanics makes dealing with these guys annoying. You can't hurt them, but they always seem to be in an unshootable place anyway. I don't care for melons, myself, but I question why they're here in a game about vegetables. Not like they ran out of them, you still have brussel sprouts, turnips and bell peppers as members of vegetables people hate.
• Tomatooths, jumping crazies. They jump around, trying to get you. Remember how I said your weapon arcs? It's not terribly annoying with the more ground based forces, but against these guys? Good luck.
• Brocolash, like the Tator Troopers, but slightly faster. Instead of attacking you with a spear, they try to whack you with their head. Guess they're krogan brocolli...
• Apels, these guys can climb up and down the poles. Not left and right, but this is the sort of thing that just doesn't happen. They're hostile, but because there's not much point in placing them somewhere poles are not, fairly obvious to spot and avoid.
• Asparagusto, these guys just run. Because of the short screen view, unless you already know where one is, it's easy to get jumped.
• Frenchy, french fries, these guys walk around and shoot at you. I might add these guys have the same reach you do, meaning you better come at them mostly level or you've had it. You know, come to think of it, why are french fries the villains in this game? What, does Mrs. Blaze suck at making french fries too?
• Squasher, weird things, they don't leave the ground until they're sure they can jump onto you. They're not unbeatable, but they're much more cleverer than the rest of the enemies.
• Sour Grapes, crushers, walk a certain distance from them and they fall down, before going back up. I find it amusing that in a game full of creepy enemy designs, the enemy grapes have nothing on the background grapes. What gives, Id? Also unhurtable.
• Pea Pods, which are so rare I did not encounter the one that exists. Apparently it shoots little creatures at you, but is itself harmless.
  

In general the level design here really reminds me of Shadow Knights. There are a lot of levels here that are either outdoors and involve climbing up cliffs or inside a stone interior. It's not bad, but it really feels like the nadir of the team's not strictly block based games. I'm guessing what happened was this wasn't just both the testing ground for the general concept of the next Keen trilogy, but the entire game was some sort of test on what didn't quite work.

The Melon Mines are an interesting level. This is possibly the first level you'll play after the intro, at least space-wise. On the surface, it's a fairly easy level, albeit with some out of the way treasure, but this level has two trickier factors in it. The first, there are bombs here, and they're buried deep. You have to make a jump onto a moving minecart lest Keen lands on radioactive railings. This is followed by a wide hallway full of platforms, the blocking kind. Oh, and there are a ton of those tomato enemies. Which, in this tight space is kind of an annoying thing to deal with.

Spud City is a weird one. This was the first level I encountered the french fry enemies with any real frequency, and the game doesn't let up when it comes to these guys. I swear every single time these guys come up here it's done in such a way that you have no way to attack before Keen is already dead. It's a long walk, frought with these things. And that's to get to the end of the level. To get the bombs, you need to climb up one particular flying insect that looks different than the others, then do perilous platforming above the area you probably narrowly made it through.

Rhubarb Rapids, I would be remiss in not talking about one of the more annoying bomb locations. Outside of being one of those outdoor levels with waterfalls and precarious cliffs to jump on, apparently Id loved this kind of level, it's not bad. If you just walk to the exit. There's a Squasher to avoid, but that's not much trouble. But if you want those bombs, you have to jump down a cliff to get a key and then return through a jump you can just barely make. No wonder little Morpheus never had the patience to beat this game, platforming hell in addition to annoying combat. Then it's a labyrinth where you better have figured out you can shoot on poles or you're going to have an exceptionally bad time.

These things practically look like they're about to say, "Who, me?"

Grape Grove, full of sour grapes. This is one of those annoying levels. The grapes come in pairs, which you think would be difficult, but it feels more like padding. Depending on the height, it might not even be a problem, you can just walk past. When you're forced to exploit the ability of the grapes to drop, however, is when things get tedious. Because you have to be ever very close to getting hit by the grape or actually in danger of being hit. So when there are two you have to activate the first one, rush past it as it climbs back up, then activate the second. Did I mention these make a crying sound each time they activate? Thankfully the bombs on this level are basically just above the exit.

Squash Swamp. No, I didn't edit that screenshot. The game really does that to you. This level wouldn't be worth talking about if it weren't for that, on account of how mundane it is afterwards. Even the bombs are just guarded by two asparagus you can figure out are there quite easily. Then you just sort of walk over to the exit.

Interesting, that gargoyle there is an appearing and disappearing platform, something I don't think I've talked about in a game before, sadly, it's not very important here.

With that, I completed all the levels except the final castle. Which is divided into two parts. The first is a large tower climb. It's pretty good, but I do have to complain that despite seeming non-linear, you have to go pretty much over the entire map, some parts twice, because you need two keys, the only such level in the game, and one of those keys is above a steep drop to the start of the level. Hope you didn't box in all the tators there on the first floor. You better not forget both of those keys too, because the exit path is just brutal.

Eyes like an old potato grows roots, apparently.

The King himself is a terrifying creature who is capable of great leaps, chasing you all across the final level. You could be in for a truly horrifying fight, or you could just spam bombs at him when he first enters the room because you can actually do that. Assuming you have enough bombs to do that. Despite finishing all the levels I somehow only had 18, guess some levels had 6 bombs as opposed to only 3. This is the only level you can use the bombs, so no being clever and using one on a particularly annoying enemy.

I find the end of this paragraph funny, if you die or wait around long enough, Keen falls asleep anyway, such a bizarre thing.

Continuing what I said earlier, Keen Dreams feels weird and low-effort. I don't necessarily think the game is quite bad, but I struggle to think of a way to improve it without radically changing what it is. On one hand this is a fever dream in which psychotic vegetables try to kill Keen. On the other, it's a bog standard platformer with a few neat levels.

I find the difficulty curious, because outside of the gotchas the game is really quite subdued. It's either putting things to 10 or being quite standard. It's just enough to make completing the game something of an accomplishment, but not difficult for that to really make the game harder to play through than a little over an hour, apparently.

Weapons:
I dislike the flower power weapon on every level, from how it's aimed to how it functions to the stupid looking thing it turns enemies into. The bombs aren't too dissimilar, beyond that whole killing the final boss thing. 0/10

Enemies:
The variety is nice, but it feels like more than a few are just slight variations on each other. 4/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Ups and downs aside, it works. Beneath the recycled Shadow Knights sections, I can see the Keen I really loved beneath the surface, waiting to bubble up. And even then, recycled Shadow Knights isn't the worst design choice in the world. 5/10

Player Agency:
Despite the weirdness of the not quite Keen control scheme, I mostly like this. My biggest issue is that I couldn't look down. I don't know if that's because of my keyboard not quite translating to Dosbox these days or if the game genuinely lacks one. I particularly like how I can shoot up and down, an oasis in a desert of games that don't let you do that. 6/10

Interactivity:
Doors, I guess. 1/10

Atmosphere:
This game is weird, befitting a game with dream in the title. I'm guessing this all is Adrian Carmack expressing his disgust at working on Keen as best he can, which would have worked if the game wasn't so subdued the rest of the time. 4/10

Graphics:
It looks nice, but sometimes the backgrounds are extremely low effort. Ah, just green blocking my path, or endless stones that look the same behind Keen. I could have sworn some of these textures were reused in other Id games, either before or after. 5/10

Story:
It works, fever dreams are weird. 1/10

Sound/Music:
Decent, but not notable. 2/10

That's 28.

Somehow that's higher than the original trilogy. I guess that's right, but whereas the first three are an awkward attempt at trying to make a genre work on PC, Keen Dreams is just broken in places it shouldn't be broken. I guess the awkward weapon doesn't truly negate what Dreams does right.

The next game may not be covered for a little bit. I've got some personal issues going on which consume more than the usual amount of spare time and these issues affect how well I can write the rest of the time. It hasn't been a very pleasant month and this one doesn't look to be much better. I may just try to get to the end of Star Fighter 3000, which I already have some idea of how I'm going to talk about, and all that really remains is to play some of it. I want to do something for the fifth anniversary of this blog. Failing that, I think it might be interesting to jump ahead a bit and play the mod based off the unproduced sequel to this game, Commander Keen Meets the Meats.

Hovertank 3D (1991)

Name:Hovertank 3D
Number:4
Year:1991
Publisher:Softdisk
Developer:iD Software
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:4/5
Time:1 hour 40 minutes
Won:Yes (66W/59L)

We're back here again. Nearly five years later and 170 games. A lot of knowledge between then and now. I had a certain tone towards this game back then, while not necessarily positive, placed undue weight on the game for it's supposed place in gaming history, as the first FPS. The first real FPS, because the other games I was aware of then didn't really count as such. Since then, I've played Star Cruiser, the first unarguable FPS, Midi Maze, a weird MP-only game, and Wayout, which is less a FPS and more a maze game, but still beat everyone to depicting this kind of world graphically.

Of course, for most people who had a subscription to Softdisk, this would not be a problem, because this would likely be one of their only ways to see something like that at the time. Outside of Sleeping Gods Lie, maybe, but that didn't do great numbers. For a simple monthly gaming magazine who rarely put out titles that really last more than a few days, it's very impressive.

How charming.

Hovertank has a fairly simple story, you're a mercenary entering the mutant infested cities to rescue kidnapped civilians; There's a time limit, they're going to blow up the city. Get in, save them, find the portal, hopefully don't die to some weird monster. Each mission has some vaguely satirical introduction briefing about whatever's going on the upcoming level. Controls are likewise simple, arrows move, ctrl shoots, hold down for a charged shot that goes through enemies, and alt is the speed forward button. It works, and that's it. I'm playing what appears to be a rerelease of the game, I note that originally I complained about there being no way of saving levels, now as you finish levels you can instantly warp to any you've finished. At least until level 8, you need a cheatcode to skip past that.

These guys just sort of wander around, making them relatively harmless to you and dangerous to the hostages.

And really, simple is the keyword of the day, because really, this game is basic. After nearly five years and a considerable number of games, it's clear that most people who play this game only do so because it's supposed to be the first FPS or at least the first iD FPS. Stripped of this impressiveness, it's really hard to play, but not as hard to play as some Wolf-clones can be. Though I sometimes get the feeling I'm on a ship with how much up and down bobbing the screen does.

Enemy hovertanks are actually dangerous, as they can shoot back.

Moving around is something of a chore, your only navigational aid amid the endless bland walls is a radar, showing hostages in white and enemies in other colors. Sound, at least most of it, is annoying and sounds like it was done by someone imitating the sounds with his mouth. In particular the gunfire, enemies dying and wall bashing sound effects are this. It discourages doing these actions, which given the objectives of the game, practically encourages quitting the game. I suspect most players don't make it very far for this reason.

To give you some idea of how long ago it was when I last played this, a coomer joke wasn't even possible here.

Still, the game manages to compensate for this somewhat by having an end screen on each mission give you money for saved hostages and time remaining, along with money deduced for how much you got damaged. I feel like this would be better served if I didn't have to work to ensure I wouldn't be rich enough to not worry about this after a few missions. You don't even need to worry about the hostages except to get out of a level.

The red guys would become the demons in the Catacomb series, and just like there, they blindly chase after you.

While combat at first is merely a matter of not getting snuck up from behind, soon enough there are enemy tanks, which makes things interesting. They shoot back at you. I should remind you at this point that you can't side-step, so you better get good at quickly turning and backing up. A group of these guys is the only reason why you'd ever need to use the charge attack, because they tend to really clump up. Enemies only have collision with you, not each other.

One of two hostage designs, because of the scale these guys look like children, odd with her "physical" design...

What I find interesting about this game as I play through it is that I actually enjoy it to some degree, but the problem is actually those hostages. Dealing with all the various baddies is fun, wandering around a featureless maze trying to find the one hallway that leads to the final hostage is another. The radar, while often helpful, is also like a car mirror, objects are closer than they appear. To say nothing of its uselessness in finding the actual path you need.

Annoyingly, enemies can make noise and shoot no matter where they are, even if they're on the other side of the map, which can be very annoying. I turned sound off after a while.

It appears blue on the radar, white/yellow are hostages/escape route, pink are demons I think.

After a certain point, shield recharges start popping up. This tends to correspond to levels where I get shot a bit more often, either way, these ensure I have just enough to survive some of these levels.

Despite being curious about it, I never really tried to see what would happen if all the hostages were dead, perhaps you lose in that case.

Despite breaking the rule of not having enemies in the location you start, I found level 12 to be one of the best levels in the game. There's no superficial level exploring, just go in, fight some tanks, gather the group of hostages, and get out. I can't help but feel that even if it would be somewhat samey, it would be the best path for this game to try taking.

There's not really much worth talking about besides that. There's not really a lot the game can do befitting it's simplistic nature. The most it can do is increase the maziness of the game's levels, something I find doesn't help the game at all. Imagine a level of Wolfenstein 3D where you can't win until you have all the treasure. And despite enemies killing hostages if they walk into them, it seems to only happen with the enemies least likely to pose a threat to you. Despite being one of the central objectives, it's really not that big a penalty if they kill any or even all of them.

Level 16 is downright evil. At first I thought it was only difficult because I was trying to play it while sick. (as it turns out, hearing the sound in this game while under the weather is awful) I kept getting killed by tanks or snuck up on by demons. It's a large hallway connecting with two interior areas. But that aside, it's still a very difficult mission. Rescuing all the hostages is impossible, not just because the game puts some hostages in very dangerous positions, but because you cannot actually reach all the hostages. Instead, you have to wait for a monster in a hidden room to reach both hostages to kill them, allowing you to reach the next level. Considering the nature of the AI, it's entirely possible for this to not happen. Perhaps there's just a secret wall people are just missing, but I checked and I'm not the only person who noticed this problem.

Level 17 is also pretty bad, deceptively so. There is a massive group of enemy tanks here, and they tend to clump up, and shoot at one. This means you can get insta-killed by an unlucky shot. But fortunately, the hostages aren't really around this massive group of tanks, so you don't need to worry about them, right? The hostages are on a side where there's a more manageable group of tanks, along with a huge group just completely unprotected. Wrong, that massive group of tanks is protecting the way out.

Now THIS is what people should have shown Ebert!

Level 18 is kind of clever despite continuing the game's trend of just having big interior areas and large outside hallways. Level design here feels really lazy at times. It actually works as a level despite having very little combat, just walk in, shoot a few demons/mutants, and save all the hostages. It's an easy level. No, what's clever about it is the level description and the interior. The building is a modern art museum, being bombed by Dadaists. Despite being incredibly primitive, the game pulls this off with various colored tiles breaking up the usual single colored walls.

Level 19 continues with the constant tanks, despite making the game more interesting once upon a time, now all they do is clump up and make the game annoying. It's the same as all the previous levels, except this time the outer hallway is full of tanks and you need to clear them out to reach the hostages. Whichever ones are left, because the interior is full of the enemies most likely to kill hostages. Remember, when dealing with clumps of enemies, you have to shoot then get out of the way, or just merely hope you can deal with them as they're rounding a corner; a task made quite difficult by how you have to turn, slowly then back up.

I wonder if this is the first "slaughterwad" as such in FPS?

Level 20 is just chaos, befitting as it's supposed to be an attack on the player's HQ. There are so many enemies that the game is constantly slowing down. Some tanks are so far away they don't even register on the radar. It's a grand affair that I'd be a lot more appreciative of if I didn't have to try to beat it and there were no health items. Seriously, this somehow manages to be a grand old journey despite being almost constantly circling hallways. It was a long fought battle, but eventually I win.

Would it have really been that hard to code in some color variations on the hostages in-game?

Resulting in an ending screen in which the leader of the organization the player works for says he wonders about those he lost, and the player character asks if he dropped some money. Yeah, this game where money has practically zero purpose is throwing in an anti-money aesop. The satire of this game was never really strong, but I can't help but feel like this ending is very disappointing.

Weapons:
While at first glance not terribly useful, the charge function of the cannon does serve a useful function, if only one brought on thanks to awkward game design. 2/10

Enemies:
Despite only having three enemies, each acts in vastly different ways which require adapting to. 2/10

Non-Enemies:
Basically power-ups you can destroy. 0/10

Levels:
Mostly generic, with a few clever levels and a few annoying levels. 4/10

Player Agency:
While it's obvious today, a FPS without a side-step function is practically insanity. Turning feels too stiff too, lining up a shot right felt like luck rather than skill at times. Also, the radar is wonky, characters are a bit further to the left than their orientation would imply. 3/10

Interactivity:
None.

Atmosphere:
It certainly has a mood, what, I'm not certain. 1/10

Graphics:
Somehow, I didn't hate it. It's not great by any means, but it doesn't give me a headache like some other games of this era do. Then again, there's just not much point in looking at the walls, since there are no secrets. Enemy sprites are simple with limited animation, and big fancy backgrounds are decent but not amazing. 2/10

Story:
Some nominal backstory and an ending, along with some briefings. 1/10

Sound/Music:
I don't mind some of the sounds, but the sounds made with some dude's voice actively hurt the game. Special consideration to the cut off swear that accompanies every death. 0/10

That's 15, or 1 less than I originally gave the game. The rating has almost completely shifted, as the categories I gave more this time, the first five, all had lower scores originally, while the latter had a rather bloated rating. Level design could be excused as I tended towards the lower ratings early on, and I didn't get very far, but I'm not sure why I gave it a 3 in atmosphere.

Taken out of it's former context as the first FPS, Hovertank 3D is just kind of there. I'm sure the people who owned it at the time were quite impressed, as I tried to be when I first played it. Now though, it kind of feels like it's mere existence is there for an, um, actually by people who don't actually know what they're talking about. Which, I, of course, would never, ever be guilty of! It feels like some people's knowledge of DOS shooters lives and dies with Id and maybe Duke. Nobody ever talks about the first FPS from Epic or the first FPS from Ken Silverman.

Oh, yeah, I was sick this last week. I wasn't sick through the entire thing, I finished most of this last Sunday or so, as one of the games made with the Freescape Engine's commercial release turned out to be something I couldn't get running. It was lucky I did, because I don't think I could have gotten anything out this week otherwise. This is not the kind of game you want to play when you're under the weather.